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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503114">The One With the Bugs</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Tales of the Abyss</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Inspired by that One Keterburg Scene, M/M, Mentions of entirely hypothetical parasites, Spiraling late night thoughts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 13:07:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,848</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503114</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke lies awake in bed at night, shaking.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jade Curtiss/Luke fon Fabre</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The One With the Bugs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It only takes about two minutes from when they say their final goodnight and Guy’s breathing begins to deepen across the tent from him, that Luke feels the anxiety start to set in.</p><p>Everything <i>hurts.</i> It hurts, and he aches, and the deep cut on his forearm still itches horribly from where Natalia had coaxed flesh back together through magic, and his head still hurts from when she had asked over and over and over again if he was okay, if he was really okay, if he was <i>sure</i> he was okay. Natalia was patient, and gentle — almost too gentle, and too careful, and had been asking too many questions, and at one point Luke had been frightened that he might start crying in his effort to prove that <i>yes, really, he was okay, he was really really okay!</i> and he’d only ended up snapping at her instead.</p><p>Classic Luke.</p><p>He grits his teeth and pushes his face into the bedroll, gripping hard into the newly formed scar, willing the bone-deep itch to subside. An unfortunate side effect of new cells stitching themselves back together nearly instantaneously, but he can’t help thinking the itch is nearly worse than the injury itself.</p><p>If he had just been a little faster. If he had just been a little <i>smarter.</i> If he hadn’t let the bandits ambush them to begin with, if he hadn’t begged to run first, if he hadn’t let them catch up and attack from the rear, if he hadn’t hesitated in doing what he knew he had to do, if, if, <i>if.</i></p><p>He’d only wanted to run because he hadn’t wanted to kill someone again. Not for the future of the world, and not for himself, and certainly not for something as stupid as money, yet all he’d really done was delay the inevitable.</p><p>Anise had gotten hurt in the process too, a stray knife getting her side so deep that Luke had felt queasy when he saw it.</p><p>It wasn’t like he was unwilling to fight to protect the people he cared about, but no one had ever told him that people were <i>hollow</i> on the inside before. Their chests and their bones were all hollow, all reverberated like a horrible drum when you struck them. No one had told him the way he’d be able to feel it from his hand to his teeth, the effort it took to pull a sword out of bone, or the way he’d still feel it in his hands hours later. Hours, days, weeks, <i>now.</i></p><p>Luke flinches, rubbing his hand into the bedroll to try to force phantom sensations out of his palms, then stills as Guy suddenly groans.</p><p>“Guy?” Luke whispers, but Guy doesn’t respond. It’s probably for the best, and Luke is relieved, but he also really needs to talk to someone. Or- no, maybe not- everyone already thinks he’s pathetic enough, better to just keep his mouth shut.</p><p>Blonde, blonde, brunette, blonde… he tries to remember each of the men killed in detail. He always does, even though- or maybe <i>especially</i> because- it makes him feel so sick to do it. They’d had their lives taken, the least Luke could do was force himself to remember their faces, though it only ever led to him remembering the way they looked when their skin had gone waxy and their eyes had gone dull.</p><p><i><b>Blonde,</b></i> he thinks again, louder, forcing himself to focus. Blonde, grey eyes. Blonde, grey eyes, blonde, grey eyes- his takes a breath, the anxiety making his thoughts loop and his head spin.</p><p>He forces his breathing to calm, one long breath in, and then out.</p><p>Blonde hair, green- no, grey eyes. Were they grey or were they green? Grey, grey, they must have been grey. The brunette had a scar, a small one through the eyebrow, and a missing tooth.</p><p>The one with brown hair had been the one who cut him, in the end. After a struggle.</p><p>Luke hadn’t been strong enough to throw the aggressor off himself. He reaches down to touch his stomach and the muscles under his skin, feeling weak and self conscious. Jade had once called them ‘fashion muscles:’ all looks but no strength behind them, and Luke supposes that’s fair, but it didn’t make Anise’s unsympathetic laughter any easier to listen to.</p><p>It has to be past midnight, but he can’t sleep yet. Doesn’t want to, because he still needs to remember each man and each face. There were three- no, four. Two that looked like brothers, so it was hard to remember. Had they been brothers? Did they have a sister? Parents? Children? Imagining bandits as loving sons and fathers seemed unlikely — but then, maybe Luke was being spoiled and judgmental again. Not like he knew what it was like to try to fight for a life outside a cushioned prison, or the depths people would have sink to out of desperation for their family. Maybe they <i>had</i> been children, brothers, fathers, in the lives of the people who loved them one moment, and then never returning home the next.</p><p>A wave of something hot and heavy suddenly rolls through him, starting in his stomach and pushing horribly to his face, and Luke throws the covers off of him and shoves his face back into the bedroll as his throat constricts. “Guy?” He tries again, knowing he won’t get a response. And he doesn’t, Guy’s breath barely so much as hitching.</p><p>He could find Jade. Who knew where the man was though. Out there synthesizing, like. Phytocondra toxin or something. Luke wasn’t even sure what that was, but it sounded scientific. Synthesizing toxin, or unlocking the secrets to immortality, or blackmailing the devil himself into cursing Jade’s enemies for him over the pretense of a casual cup of tea.</p><p>Luke imagines the cold of the night at his back and shivers. It’s chilly enough inside the tent without his blanket on, and the sound of Guy’s steady breathing is too comforting to leave.</p><p>Jade hates him, anyway.</p><p>He rolls restlessly onto his back, swallowing down the miserable lump in his throat and forcing himself to take another breath. He needs to remember, okay, he needs to focus.</p><p>Jade- no, the bandit, one of the bandits, he was thinking about them- the one who had cut him. He had brown eyes, and the knife he’d used was dull and dirty. It had hurt so <i>fucking much</i> going through skin, the jagged edges only seeming to make it that much worse. It had been almost unbearable to have cleaned, and Luke could still feel the layer of sweat that had risen to his skin at the pain, thick and miserable. Natalia had been so patient with him too, even as he writhed and tried to pull away from her on instinct, talking him through it and reminding him how important it was to get the wound clean before healing to make sure nothing got trapped inside his skin. The thought had made him feel sick enough to at least <i>try</i> to hold still as she scrubbed against raw flesh.</p><p>… Jade had told him about a parasite, once. A huge issue in war zones, it would burrow into the wounds of soldiers to lay its eggs, and they’d come crawling out of the skin a week later. He’d looked almost giddy talking about it.</p><p>Luke flexes his arm, trying to decide if it feels any different. It burns, and it <i>itches,</i> but that’s probably just the side effect of the fonons, right? If he thought hard enough about it, maybe it <i>did</i> feel a little weird though. A little. crawly. But no, it was in his head. Right? Yes.</p><p>...right?</p><p>Vaguely he wonders if Anise is laying in the girls’ tent thinking about parasites and bug eggs and things crawling in her skin, but he thinks she couldn’t possibly be. She was talking to Ion when Jade had been cheerfully explaining the burrowing habits of flesh infecting parasites, and besides, Jade said they only lived in tropical climates, anyway. Or was it the mountains? If it was the mountains then he was REALLY in trouble, camped out here practically on the side of a sheer cliff face.</p><p>Hopefully it was the tropics.</p><p>Luke’s thoughts become looser after that, turning more and more to water slipping through his fingers the harder he tries to grasp at them. He can’t forget to wash his arm, or Anise might turn him into a bug, and wouldn’t that be terrible? Then Tear really would hate traveling with him. Natalia needs a break, and he’ll start working out again, definitely, starting tomorrow, or Jade might always have to wash off blood.</p><p>He doesn’t think he’s fallen asleep, but he must have, because he realizes that he’s woken up from a nightmare that reeked of copper, and he’s shaking. Someone is bent over him, grasping for the blanket kicked near his feet, and he’d panic except that whoever it is smells like lemongrass and that’s <i>so much better</i> than the scent of pennies and stomach bile.</p><p>And anyway, there was only one person who always, perpetually, smelled like lemongrass and salt, from the tops of mountains to the depths of volcanoes.</p><p>Jade. It has to be Jade, even if Luke is too tired and delirious to open his eyes, he’d recognize it anywhere.</p><p>He feels as the blanket is gently shaken out, feels the warmth of Jade’s chest as he leans over to pull it back over his shoulders. The weight of it feels secure now, instead of suffocating, when it’s accompanied by gentle hands and a solid presence.</p><p>On a desperate impulse, Luke suddenly rolls over, arms reaching out to wrap around Jade’s chest to pull him closer, pressing his face against Jade’s chest.</p><p>He’s expecting the way that Jade tenses in surprise, muscles flinching and freezing as he tries to find his balance. And Luke is expecting him to pull away. To unwind Luke’s arms from Jade’s shoulders, push him back down onto the sleep mat, and leave.</p><p>But he doesn’t.</p><p>There’s a long pause where Luke can feel Jade take a deep breath, shifting just enough to brace his hand on the ground for a moment. Then very, very slowly, Jade sinks, arm stretching out to cushion Luke’s head as Jade pulls him gently against his chest and winds his other arms against Luke’s back.</p><p>They settle somehow, like it’s easy, Luke’s cheek pressed against Jade’s arm and his head under Jade’s chin. Jade slowly slides a hand to curl his fingers into the hairs at the back of Luke’s neck, turns his face just slightly to touch the part of his hair, and Luke finally lets out a soft breath.</p><p>He doesn’t dream of blood, after that. He doesn’t dream of anything at all, just sinks into sleep uninterrupted for the first time in months.</p><p>Jade is gone when he wakes up, but two pillows are pressed snugly against his back where he’s sure Jade had been, both smelling faintly of lemongrass.</p>
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